Strong thunderstorms erupted on the evening of 04/28/17 and continued into the overnight, expanding in coverage and producing prolific lightning in spots. The Weather Prediction Center’s Metwatch Desk was particularly busy issuing multiple Mesoscale Precipitation Discussions (MPD) to stay ahead of the flash flood threat.

“GOES-16/EAST WV LOOP SHOWS A RELATIVELY FLATSHORTWAVE ACROSS NW OH WITH THE TRAILING TROF SW ACROSS CENTRALIND/IL WITH A MCS TRACKING ACROSS CENTRAL IND. THIS MCS IS AT THEAPEX OF SOUTHWESTERLY LOW LEVEL JET/WAA REGIME OVERRUNNING A WARMFRONT THAT EXTENDS FROM LWV…N OF LOU AND S OF CVG. THIS COMPLEXHAS BEEN PRODUCING 1.5-2.5″ RAIN AS IT TRACKED THROUGH WESTCENTRAL IND…AND WILL LIKELY MAINTAIN AS IT CROSSES INTO LOWERFFG VALUES ACROSS SE IND/SW OH IN THE NEXT HOUR OR SO.”

As Greg mentioned, GOES-16 6.9 μm “mid-level” water vapor imagery shows a relatively flat shortwave aiding in the maintenance of the Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) over Indiana and Ohio, while a stronger shortwave can be seen moving out of Iowa into southeastern Minnesota. What other features can you identify in this animation?

The GOES-16 1-minute 0.64 μm “Red” visible animation shows the incredible detail in the cloud top environment (0.5 km resolution) of the aforementioned MCS moving through Indiana and Ohio. Note the persistent overshooting tops and their subsequent gravity waves rippling across the cirrus shield. This is indicative of healthy, organized updrafts which a forecaster can then make a decision on whether the activity will persist, strength, or weaken with time.

Once again, the 1-minute imagery proves valuable here as the trend of the cold cloud tops can be seen expanding with the MCS, while new convection fires near the Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana borders. Note the dark pixels indicating very cold overshooting tops. Can you spot the enhanced-V structures down-stream from those towers?

The ongoing MCS in the above GOES-16 10.3 μm “Clean” infrared animation with GLD-360 5-minute lightning density overlaid appears to weaken a bit as new convection farther southwest takes advantage of a stout low-level jet. Notice how the lightning cores are exceeding the color scale that was set by the developers at OPC and NESDIS. Grant it, the color scales are somewhat limited by the GEMPAK software (6.5 bit or 96 colors), yet it’s safe to assume the lightning activity is very intense.

Finally, around 0500 UTC on 04/29/17, Andrew Orrison again referenced GOES-16 in his analysis of the well-defined (new) MCS which developed overnight:

“THE SATELLITE PRESENTATION OF THE CONVECTION IS VERY IMPRESSIVEWITH THE EXPERIMENTAL GOES-16 10.3 MICRON/IR IMAGERY DEPICTING AVERY LARGE AREA OF VERY COLD CONVECTIVE CLOUD TOPS…REACHINGNEARLY -80C…WITH NUMEROUS OVERSHOOTING TOPS EMBEDDED WITHIN THECONVECTIVE MASS. THIS IS INDICATIVE OF VERY STRONG FORCING WHICHIS ENHANCED NOT ONLY IN THE LOW LEVELS GIVEN THE LOW LEVEL JET ANDISENTROPIC ASCENT…BUT ALSO BROADLY DIFFLUENT FLOW ALOFTASSOCIATED WITH RIGHT-ENTRANCE REGION JET DYNAMICS.”

As Andrew referenced in his MPD, as the night progressed, the convection along the Midwest through Ohio Valley erupted into an elongated MCS with embedded Mesoscale Convective Vortices (MCVs) that will have to be watched later in the day.

WPC Day 1-3 QPF issued at 2040 UTC on 04/28/17 and valid from 0000 UTC 04/29/17 to 0000 UTC 05/02/17. Click to enlarge

As you can see in the above Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts for Day 1 (top) and Days 1-3 (bottom), this was only the beginning of a prolonged flood threat for the Mid-Mississippi Valley and eventually farther north to western Michigan.

GOES-16 is certainly proving to be useful in operations as the increased temporal and spatial resolutions when compared to GOES-E (13) and GOES-W (15), provides more detail, fluidity, and trend monitoring to assist in the forecast decision-making process. Additional channels, multispectral imagery (RGBs), band-differences, and derived products will be explored throughout 2017, so please stay tuned for more posts!

Thanks for reading!

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